


At the Heart of Reason

by a_sparrows_fall



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Backstory, Canon - Book, Characters in their youth, Coming of Age, F/M, Gen, Geralt is into monsters, Mild Smut, Original witcher character, Young Geralt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 10:53:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13588548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_sparrows_fall/pseuds/a_sparrows_fall
Summary: The wolf pups of Kaer Morhen visit the Temple of Melitele after their Trials, and one in particular has trouble sleeping.A tale of young Geralt. Based on the story “The Voice of Reason.”





	At the Heart of Reason

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you forever and always to [Dor](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dordean) and [Kael](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeltale/pseuds/kaeltale) for their wonderful enthusiastic beta, and help wordsmithing the title! :)

He comes to her toward midnight.

His movement is absolutely noiseless: neither the fall of his feet nor the brush of his garments stir the air in the slightest.

She’s accustomed to silence, to some degree. Here in the temple, where many are bound to their quietude for years at a time, any sound at all approaches cacophony. She herself can ghost through stone chambers causing less disruption than most other humans would.

But unlike her, he is not human. Not entirely.

She might not have been aware of his approach at all had she not been waiting for him. But by the time he’s reached the foot of her bed, she’s already tossed aside the modest woven blanket covering her, filling the air with the delightful scent of bergamot and jasmine, a lingering trace of the oils she’d adorned herself with earlier. She’s adorned with nothing now.

Eager to be so unrestricted himself, he draws the shirt of ivory broadcloth over his head as he kneels on the mattress. His trousers join both it and the blanket on the stone tile floor shortly thereafter, and he begins stalking his way to her on all fours, a journey that seems to take years.

In the dark, his yellow eyes flash silvery green, and for a brief moment, it’s easy to imagine he’s some enormous catlike beast searching for prey.

She parts her thighs, and when he nestles between them, she throws her head back, entirely happy to be devoured.

Her fingers weave themselves into his short black hair, gripping it, and there’s a fine sheen of sweat on the smooth dark of her brow when she begins her supplications: soft cries increasing in their tempo as he increases his.

All forms of prayer are blessed in the Goddess’s sight. Some are just more enjoyable.

After the wave of divinity breaks over her and settles, he draws himself up, hovering above her. She very nearly moves to push him to his back, to mount him. But she can see tenderness in his stance, not dominance, and she relaxes beneath him, lets him cover her. He enters her with all the reverence she and her sisters show when entering the Sanctuary for their daily worship.

They move together as the Goddess moves with the seasons; she feels something open within her again and again, flowering and fading in a rhythm unbroken, as old as the act itself, as old as her Goddess’s love.

He’s approaching his own climax; she can read the tension etched into his broad, flat featured face. So she wraps her legs around him, makes a cross of her ankles, and draws him in deeper.

She guides him through his ascent to the peak; he is broken and made new, as all things should be.

The silence coalesces around them once again. Their breathing is the tide of a vast ocean, settling after a storm.

She watches him lying beside her, spent, breathing in her scent, his expression hazy with pleasure. She smiles and floats beside him.

Once she’s master of her own limbs again, she draws the candlestick out from under her bed. She begins to look for something to light it with, but he heads off her search with a movement of his fingers, and there’s a glow where there was none before.

Of course. She should have thought of that.

She places the candle on the window ledge, she studies him in the light.

He looks just as she remembered him, just as she thought he would. He looks beautiful.

She can’t imagine anyone seeing this man and regarding him as a freak, but she supposes it must be so.

Yes, he has some of the telltale scars on his body, the marks of his profession. But they’re fainter than on most of the other witchers she’s seen, as if he’s taken care to tend them, let them heal properly. And rather unusually for one of his kind, none mar the beauty of his face. She likes to think she’s not so shallow that she wouldn’t mind terribly if they did. She does love the unblemished smoothness of him, though: the pouty lips framed by the thin mustache and goatee, the gentle slope of his hooded eyes, the curve of his jaw.

It doesn’t hurt that he’s looking at her like she’s some blessed idol herself, his eyes drifting lazily between her eyes and her breasts.

“Gods but you’re perfect,” he breathes at last, grinning. “I know this is a temple, but I’m pretty sure you’re the holiest thing in it.”

She should probably rebuke him for his blasphemous compliments, but she can’t seem to stop smiling for long enough to make her mouth form the words.

“I’ll take that in the spirit it’s intended, _Master_ Aurus,” she says, stressing his title.

He nods in kind. “Much obliged, Elder Sister.”

“Not 'Elder' yet,” she corrects. “Not just yet.”

As much as she desperately wants that label and the responsibility that goes with it, she realizes it’s unlikely for them to bestow it on her at her age. She’s done more at twenty-one than some sisters do in a lifetime of service, but being a disciple of the Goddess is not a race, as Mother Sulla has informed her many times.

She’s not trying to show anyone up. It’s only that the gardens are her home as much as anywhere in the North has been. The work is good and gives her life meaning, and she’s thrown herself into it. For all the time she spends fixed in mediation and prayer, she exists more easily in motion than at rest, and that’s been reflected in all she’s achieved.

Aurus half frowns. He knows how much she wants it, too, and she can tell he sympathizes. He’s the youngest master at Kaer Morhen, although in truth she isn’t sure by how much. He doesn’t look much past thirty, but she knows that’s nothing to go by where a witcher is concerned, and she hasn’t found the courage to ask his real age; she’s not even sure she wants to know.

“It’s just a formality, now, isn’t it? Has to be.”

Maybe at the ceremony this Velen, for the equinox. Maybe they’ll announce it then.

“I think so,” she agrees tentatively. “I hope so.”

He leans down at kisses the top of her breast, more a gesture of familiarity and comfort than seduction. “I _know_ so. The garden would wither without you.” 

Settling into the pillows, he lets his head rest against her upper arm, the warm paleness of his skin contrasting the deep, cool richness of hers.

“ _Many_ things would wither without you,” he pouts.

Immediately, she tips her head to the side and purses her lips in response, letting him know just what she thinks of _that_ compliment.

They see each other once a year, if that. There’s nothing formal that binds them. Their feelings are strong, of course, but as young as she is, she knows that’s not enough.

Witchers are married to the Path, whether they like it or not; anyone else in their life must settle for being a mistress—or even less than that.

She doesn’t hold the thought with bitterness—it would be the most rank hypocrisy for her not to consider her duties to the temple above any she has to him.

But she’d rather he didn’t spin tales about what they have and what they don’t.

He laughs quietly, taking her meaning.

“I _do_ look forward to this all year,” he says, voice gentle, eyes downcast as he traces a circle into the bedsheets. As reluctant as he is in this statement, it’s the one she finds herself believing.

“I love… this place,” he says carefully. Then he breaks into another grin. “And I _love_ those little noises you make.”

She smiles begrudgingly, moved by his infectious enthusiasm.

“And here I thought you were going to tell me you liked me better during my vow of silence.”

His face changes instantly, and he gasps, dropping his mouth open in a ridiculous caricature of shock. “I didn’t know you did thought scrying!”

She set herself up for that remark, true, but that doesn’t mean she can’t punish him for it.

The _smack_ lands on the flat of his chest. The one strike was really all she’d intended, but he’s still laughing at her, and the sweet, sharp _slap_ sound that her hand makes against his muscle bound form makes is so enticing that she follows it up with several more.

On the fifth or sixth hit, as her hand lands against his pectoral, there’s a resounding _boom_.

Both of their faces fall, and she pulls her hand away instantly, inspecting his chest for damage.

Before she can say anything at all, there’s a second boom, and her good sense comes back to her enough that she recognizes that the sound is coming from outside, rumbling in from the window.

She’s relieved and feeling a bit silly herself, but Aurus flops back against the pillow, looking chagrined.

“Oh, fuck,” he groans, scrubbing a hand over his face. “ _Aard_.”

She recognizes the name of the Sign, the simple spells that are a witcher’s constant companion. But who would be practicing it at this time of night? Or at all, for that matter, besides Aurus?

“Who is—?”

“The little wolf.” He inhales slowly through his nose as he closes his eyes, as if drawing strength from his own personal deity.

Her brain had reached a becalmed, almost meditative state only minutes before; she has to shake it awake to try to follow his meaning.

His students. He must mean one of his students.

It’s odd that he uses the emblem of their school as a descriptor—all of his adepts could be called ‘little wolves’, could they not? But it sounds like he has a specific individual in mind.

“Which one?”

“Geralt.”

It takes her a moment, but she finds his likeness in her mind.

“The little scrawny one? He’s here?”

He’s a sweet, clever boy. She’s seen him twice.

Once, a few years ago, she visited Kaer Morhen to advise on some healing treatments on behalf of Mother Sulla. That was the first time the lad caught her eye. He must have been about seven at the time: a pale blue-eyed stripling, small for his age, with unruly red hair—not a bright lick of flame like a Skelliger’s, but more the color of the late afternoon sun before it slips into setting.

It was also the first time _Aurus_ caught her eye. (She’d caught his, too, as it turned out.)

Then she’d seen the boy last summer, after he survived the Trials of the Grasses and the Dreams. Aurus brought him and all the other boys in his cohort as part of the yearly trip.

She’s not sure how far back the tradition goes, but it must be at least decades now. It precedes the start of her training, certainly.

After the remaining boys from any given run of the Trials recover enough to travel, the acting signs master at Kaer Morhen brings them here to the Temple of Melitele in Ellander.

For the newly made witchers-to-be, the trip offers a brief recess from the harshness of the old Sea Keep and its awful realities, its stale air of death and blood. And Melitele’s young novices have their first chance to practice their healing arts on souls their own age who are badly in need of care.

Add in the fact that the boys are still far too in shock to chase after the girls with any real zeal as they might were they completely healthy and a little older, and their stay tends to be a pleasant one: a good experience for all involved.

Following the death of the old signs master, Aurus had been given the position on an interim basis, and made the journey to the temple for the first time. Unlike his students, he was in excellent shape, and having remembered her from her trip, he was all too eager to give chase.

Her memories of that time are mostly taken up with thoughts of Aurus himself, but she does recall Geralt, too.

She’d been pleased to see him, glad he’d made it through the torment that all young witchers are forced to undergo. In fact, it had been plain to see he was recovering much more quickly than the other boys. While they were still ill, their faces drawn and pale, he’d been lively and full of energy; she ended up putting him to work in the kitchens, and even let him tend visitors’ horses in the stables.

He seemed to possess a keen mind, too. His eyes, having traded their blue for yellow, were sharp, and observed everything around him. On several occasions, he accompanied her to the gardens to study the herbs growing there... and to flirt with the novices, of course.

As much as she could see that he would be trouble as he grew, she liked him. Recalling his brief time in her sphere, if there was a single young adept who’d been nicknamed after the school’s mascot, she could see why it would be him.

But none of that explains why he’s back again.

“He went through the Trials last year,” she voices her confusion aloud to Aurus.

“He’s not as scrawny now,” he tells her, shaking his head. “And he had them again this year, too.”

She draws back at that. She mustn’t have heard him correctly.

“What? What are you talking about?”

He hesitates so long in his explanation that she knows she’s not going to like whatever it is he has to say.

“Prothero had six or seven boys he thought were doing particularly well. He wanted to do more with them; gods know what. So he put them back on the herbs with the new aspirants, and gave them another regimen of mutagens.”

She feels the blood draining from her face.

“ _Aurus!_ ” she squeals, voice shrill with horror.

He flinches, and she realizes she’s raised her hand again.

“ _What?_ I didn’t have any say in it.”

She wants to hit him—or, no, she wants to hit someone. But the object of her wrath isn’t here, and she stills her hand.

She speaks slowly, explaining it back to herself, to see if it makes any more sense on a second try. “He takes the best boys, the ones with the most promise, and tries to _kill_ them all over again?”

“More than try,” he says, his voice low, bitter. “Geralt’s the only one left of the bunch. Or will be, within a week. There are two more back at Kaer Morhen, but they—” He cuts himself off. “He was the only one who could make the trip,” he finishes euphemistically. “Thought it’d be good for him to visit again. Get his mind off it.”

She opens up her mouth, but her lip only trembles slightly, so she closes it again. She shakes her head.

He twists, lying on his elbow, and observes her struggling.

“Do you think we’re monsters?” he says at last.

She pauses, and sees him flinch again—not so violently this time, but there’s more hurt in his eyes—and she regrets her hesitation. But she’s just so damned _furious_.

“I don’t think _you’re_ a monster,” she says truthfully. “And ‘monster’ doesn’t really cover—” Her hand flies in a geometric formation, making Melitele’s sign as angers washes over her features. “Mother forgive what I’m thinking about Prothero right now.”

 _Boom._ The low, violent sound breaks the quiet again.

Aurus sits up further, making to leave. He runs a hand through his hair, trying to make it slightly less unkempt.

“I should go stop him before he starts practicing _Igni_.”

She’s yanked back from her rage by that, finding her mind firmly mired in confusion once again.

“You said you don’t teach them _Igni_ for two years after the Trials.”

“I don’t.” He shrugs. “I haven’t taught him _Aard_ yet either.”

Her eyes go wide.

“Goddess protect us.”

Another boom shakes the bed, this one louder than the others, and he slides to the edge of the mattress. She shoots out her hand, placing it on his arm, stopping him.

If he leaves now to make for the courtyard, he’ll be closer to his own quarters than hers, and it’s possible he won’t return again tonight; sneaking back might not be worth the trouble.

Technically, he shouldn’t have to sneak. He really doesn’t have to hide. There’s nothing _wrong_ with what they’re doing, per se. It doesn’t violate any written temple rules.

But with her advancement to Elder on the line, she’d rather not take any chances that some wrinkly old crone might use her relationship as proof that she’s not mature enough for the role.

She can take care of this: keep her reputation intact, and keep Aurus here, too.

“I’ll go,” she tells him firmly, sitting up. “Wait here.”

He frowns. “You sure? I don’t know if he’ll listen—”

She barely pauses in gathering up her things to shoot him a look.

“He’ll listen. And so will you, if you know what’s good for you.”

Her robes fastened about her in mere moments, she watches him watching her as she pulls back the dark waves of her hair, completing her transformation back to temple official. She scowls at him extremely officially.

“Of course,” he agrees, genuflecting to her as befits her status. But he smiles, too. “Of course, Sister Nenneke.”

* * *

Geralt is the only one in the courtyard.

That isn’t entirely surprising. As was the case last year, the other boys are much too sick to get up to any shenanigans of this nature.

But as she stands in the stone archway, watching him leap and tumble, she realizes she’d almost hoped there was another adept down here with him; it’s an awful lot of racket for one little wolf to make.

Fortunately, based on the location of the courtyard, it’s likely that only the other witchers and a couple of her sisters might have heard the commotion, as the novices’ dormitories are on the other side of the Sanctuary. She wonders if he knows that, if that’s why he chose this spot.

Aurus was right: he isn’t as scrawny as he was after the first dose of mutagens, and he moves with a sharp-edged grace usually lacking in a boy his age. His shoulders have a broader set than before, and he’s shot up in height, too. Some of that is natural growth, she assumes.

But if she didn’t know better, she’d have thought he’d reached his fifteenth or sixteenth summer, not his twelfth. The sight of him reveling in his newfound strength is both captivating and a little sad: witcher boys have always had to grow up fast in their minds; it seems that Prothero wants to echo the process in their bodies as well.

He swings a branch about him, moving through various stances and guards. Pirouetting, he experimentally tosses his ‘weapon’ from his right hand to his left and then back again. She thinks for a moment he’s about to throw another Sign of _Aard_ , but he pauses mid-motion, adjusting his fingers with care, trying to perfect the gesture.

It becomes clear to her, as he somersaults and parries, that he’s not trying to bring the temple down, isn’t channeling his energy to destructive ends. Which means they haven’t broken him yet.

He’s not out here because he’s angry, he’s out here because he’s _bored_. And that is something that can be managed.

She offers her thanks silently to the Goddess, and waits for him to land his backflip before speaking.

“You trying to wake up the whole temple?” she calls out to him, breaking the night’s stillness and his concentration. “Or do you just want to annoy Aurus?”

He spins in her direction, and though his eyes are wide, the light from the full moon is so bright that his pupils appear as no more than a thin dark slash, splitting his amber irises.

He throws up his free hand defensively, fingers separated, pinky and thumb turned down, and gold flickers in the air around him before fading out.

He hasn’t mastered _Quen_ yet, then. The only Sign he should actually know. He’s all offense and no defense, which seems about right for a talented boy of his age: he’s drawn to the flashier, more “powerful” Signs.

Recognizing her, he drops both his hands to his sides, taking a more casual stance. He gives her a look that doesn’t quite qualify as a smile, and shrugs. It seems as though that’s the extent of an answer her question is going to receive.

“I think you know what he would say about practicing on your own,” she needles, folding her arms over her chest.

“That it only ‘embeds your errors’?” he asks, quoting the signs master’s words. His voice is lower than she expected by about half an octave; she doesn’t remember it being that deep last year.

He spins the stick back and forth idly, keeping his wrists warm. “He only says that because Vesemir says it. I’ve seen Aurus practice by himself before.”

“That’s his privilege as a master,” she informs him, hoping she’s managed to sound authoritative about witcher matters she knows little of herself.

He doesn’t contradict her. He merely returns to his drills, stepping into a few more guard forms.

The transition between the timidity he shows at rest and the confidence he exudes in motion is striking, and it hits her that perhaps he’s not striving for a goal, but using these exercises as a means of running away from something else.

“You couldn’t sleep, could you?” she asks. “Nightmares?”

He stops in the middle of a strike and shrugs again before following through on the movement. She isn’t sure if the mutagens robbed him of his ability to lie, or if he’s always been naturally bad at deception.

She crosses the courtyard to him. He may find it easier to describe his discomfort if he doesn’t have to shout his fears out to her, even if no one else is around to hear them.

“What were they about?”

Slowly, reluctantly, he lets the branch drop again. His shoulders fall to a slumped position, and he tilts his head in thought.

“They weren’t nightmares, exactly,” he qualifies, both thoughtful and a little defensive. “There was a strange part and good part.” He shuffles, the soles of his boots scraping the stone. “First it was just monsters. You know. An archgriffin. A fiend. Some alghouls. Typical stuff.”

He says it easily, with an imitated bravado, as if he’d actually fought all these creatures himself. The way he stands with his Signing hand resting on his cocked hip is so very like Aurus that she has to bite her lip to keep from laughing outright.

He shuffles again, and his face changes. He draws back within himself fractionally.

“And then I was in a forest. I was chasing after this girl, but every time I got close, she turned into a bird.”

Hmm. She’s no oneiromancer, but if he gave her more detail... 

“What kind of a bird was it?”

“I couldn’t ever get a good look at it,” he admits.

“Ah.” It’s just as well. It’s rare such things actually turn out to be portents, anyway. It’s more important to know what it was that drew him out here. “Was that the good part of the dream?”

“That was the _strange_ part,” he clarifies, and then, for the first time, he smiles at her. _Really_ smiles.

Oh, so he _likes_ monsters? They don’t frighten him?

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. She’s seen it go the other way before. Some boys are terrified into helplessness long before they’re pressed into the Trial of the Cave, shadows of beasts they’ve read about haunting their dreams.

She can’t help him with the human wickedness he’ll have to go up against once he’s on the Path, but when it comes to battling creatures from another plane, she can at least help give him the knowledge to handle that part of the job well.

“Geralt,” she addresses him softly, invitingly. “Would you like to see the library?”

* * *

He trails behind her as she guides him down the hallway, staring for long moments at the intricate stitching of the tapestries lining the walls, then jogs to catch up.

The width of his pupils flickers, mirroring the flame of the torch she carries, trying to adjust to its light. He even raises his hand to cover his eyes at times, obviously still unused to his new abilities.

He’d frowned at her suggestion at first—he seemed indignant at her implication that he was at all bookish. But the way he’d fussed over getting the hand motions of his Signs right, his focus on the embroidery of the wall hangings… they tell him all she needs to know. He _does_ have an eye for detail. It just has to be engaged by a subject he cares about.

She leads him through the door to the library, and while she paces on, moving to light a candelabra at one of the long central tables, he stops in his tracks. Glancing back, she sees him gazing up at the arched ceiling first. His eyes drift downward, taking in the room’s second level, then finally its first, including the rows and rows of books lining seemingly endless shelves on each one.

It’s an impressive sight, she reminds herself.

He mustn’t have been shown this space during his last trip to the temple. It’s easily three times the size of the library at Kaer Morhen, perhaps even more than that. She’s heard it’s the largest collection of printed works in the North outside of Oxenfurt. She’s grown used to it herself, but it’s refreshing to see it through his eyes.

Making her way to the shelves nearest the door, she scans the oversized volumes housed there, and selects several works. Finally she pulls one leather bound tome whose size dwarfs the others: _Tales of Skellige and the Northern Wilds_.

It’s an illuminated manuscript, the pages of its text brought to life with not only rough black and white etchings and woodblock prints, but fully painted, extraordinarily detailed illustrations.

She herself poured over it again and again as a novice; it was one of her favorites. It’s hard to believe that she was his age less than a decade ago. Her life has changed so much in the intervening time.

Undoubtedly, though, Geralt’s will change even more soon enough.

He waits patiently for her, seated near the candelabra, though he can’t seem to stop fidgeting, his fingers moving through intricate patterns.

Even setting them in front of him as gently as she can, the sound of the books landing on the table echoes through the chamber, sounding like a tiny version of _Aard_ itself. She gestures at the stack, waiting for him to pick a title.

He immediately goes for _Tales_ , and her heart warms. He’s going to like that one, she knows it.

“It’s a book of fables, mostly—” she begins to explain, but he’s already thrown it open to the middle of a chapter, revealing one of the lavishly rendered images.

High in her tower, Longlocks lets down her beautiful chestnut hair for her prince to ascend. Nenneke smiles; she’s glad getting Aurus into her chambers is slightly less difficult than is depicted here.

Geralt observes the details before him: the delicate weave of the knotwork in the borders, the shadows in between the bricks of the tall tower, the expressions on the faces of the lovers. It’s clear he’s intrigued, if not entirely convinced by the merits of the subject matter.

“Fairy tales?” he asks. She can tell he’s trying not to sound disappointed.

“Yes, but—”

“I know these stories already,” he cuts in, his voice lilting up, momentarily giving it a slightly petulant edge. He pauses, then amends his judgement: “It _is_ very beautiful, though.”

Nenneke smiles again. A book is more than a single page. Perhaps Aurus’s tenacity has been rubbing off on her: she’s not going to give up without a fight.

“I doubt you know all of them,” she persists, gently beginning to flip through the thin pages, careful not to turn them too quickly for fear of damaging them. “And you’ve never _seen_ the princesses in them before, have you?”

Geralt shakes his head. It looks like he finds that subject at least mildly interesting. He rests his elbows on the table, settling in, and cards his fingers through his hair.

Standing over him, she catches something she hadn’t before, probably having mistaken it for a moonbeam when they were in the courtyard earlier.

Sprouting from the part line near the edge of his brow, there’s a shock of bright white hair, not quite an inch in length. Doing a quick calculation, it seems likely to have started growing in such a fashion immediately after the most recent Trials. Her heart lurches in her chest as she stares at it, imagining the trauma he must have suffered to come by it.

He glances up at her temporary stillness, and she quickly looks back to the book.

There are several pages devoted to the tale of Three Brothers, and she flips ahead. They’ll come to the princesses eventually, but for now she knows what the next story is, and moves on eagerly.

“Of course,” she tells him, her voice pitching up with a promise of things to come, “Fairy Stories always have villains, and many times those villains are...”

The next page reveals a horrific scene, presented in the greens and browns of the Temerian countryside, but overwhelmingly, the main color of the piece is red.

Blood flows like a river around the slaughtered victims of the Cursed Hunter, the man who was turned into a Ghoul. It’s nonsense, of course, but makes for a compelling tale. One full of...

“...monsters.”

His eyes dance at that, his hands balling into fists, as if by wishing he could summon a weapon to them.

“Aww, yessss,” he hisses excitedly, before biting his lip and giving her a shy glance. “I mean. It’s. Uhm. Very vivid.”

She laughs softly, happy to have found the mark at last. It feels good to give him the gift of an enemy that isn’t his own life, the torture he’s been subjected to. Something he could strike at, rebel against.

“I thought you might find it interesting. Actually, I think there’s a story with a—”

But before she can reach in to skim through the pages again, his nimble fingers have beaten her there. Reenergized, he forges ahead, seeking new and exciting scenes—

—and stops again almost immediately.

The water nymph stares back from the page, her eyes as huge and as lightless as her aquatic home, black from corner to corner, threatening to engulf whoever might catch a glimpse of her above the surface.

She’s posed artfully, laying casually atop a rock. Lakeweed is ensnared in her long hair, and curls around certain parts of her form, the artist having used her natural surroundings to grant her a hint of modesty. And, yes, the scales framing her face and shoulders draw one’s attention somewhat from her nudity. But it all in all, it can’t be denied that it’s an alluring image.

Geralt stills. It’s hard to see from this angle, but she thinks his mouth might be hanging open a little.

 _The Prince and the Naiad_. Of course. She’d forgotten this story. Or perhaps not so much forgotten as failed to realize how it would look to a boy of his age.

“Uh,” he says at last.

Quickly but not without care, he breaks into swift motion again, turning more pages over.

He stops this time at two illustrations that mirror one another.

On the left page, closer to the bound edge, there’s a dapper gentleman, nearly dandyish in the crisp appearance of his clothes and the carefree expression on his mustachioed face. Behind him is a nightmare beast, hinting at both bat and bird in its appearance. Sweeping growths protrude from its nose, making its face look rather like a blooming lily, only much more horrific.

The companion picture on the opposite side has a dual nature as well. In front, a beautiful blonde woman in a fine green gown raises a glass of wine, smiling. Behind her, an unclothed female figure stands in shadow, her nails trailing into long claws, her mouth a ghastly display of wicked points.

“ _Those_ are vampires. A katakan and bruxa,” he identifies the creatures at the far edges carefully. “But…”

He narrows his eyes as he takes in the whole of the image, and scrutinizes the text below it.

She has a horrible thought that she’s ruining Aurus’s colleagues’ lesson plans for years to come.

“I didn’t know they could change like that,” he whispers. “Is this… Are they…”

He turns back over his shoulder to look her in the eye, and she expects him to say, “monsters,” and she can feel herself beginning to panic.

This is not what she had in mind. Yes, of course, it’s clear they _are_ monsters, she thinks. But they look very human indeed, and that could lead to him asking how one can be sure if someone or something _is_ a monster, and… She didn’t mean to start a conversation that delves into the nature of good and evil. She had been specifically trying to avoid it.

She’s working through two or three possible responses in her head, not really feeling confident about any of them, when the end of his sentence takes her by surprise.

“...real?” he finishes unexpectedly.

The corner of his mouth turns up just a touch, and his eyes glow with an enthusiasm she suspects he doesn’t mean to show. Suddenly she has a sinking feeling that lesson plans are the least of her worries.

“Well,” she answers slowly. “Some of them, I think.”

She very carefully does not reach out to pull the book away from him, standing instead with a forced calm as he peruses the contents of the rest of the chapter, which details the creatures’ deaths. He looks on studiously, neither triumph or disappointment in his reaction as they are shown being impaled by a witcher—who looks fairly monstrous in his own right.

“Of course, Aurus would know better than I would. Has he not…? Have they not taught you about—?”

A bold title in large characters— _The Mists of Skellige_ —heralds a new section, and the first beast to greet them this time is a centaur.

She breathes a sigh of relief. Centaurs are, as far as she knows, are bound purely to the realm of mythology.

She remembers looking at this page fondly in her own youth, and has a little sympathy for Geralt.

She might not be as… _interested_ in monsters as he appears to be, but she recalls seeing the centaur for the first time, and being captivated by his more human half. There are so few images of men portrayed as objects of desire, but that’s exactly how he appears here: bare to the waist, he draws back his bow, his pose accentuating his strength and defiance. The broad plane of his chest, the chiseled muscle of his torso, his roguish expression… she still finds it exceedingly charming even now.

Her favorite part of the image by far, however, is the being’s bronze skin and dark eyes and hair; she’s not sure what the artist’s motives in coloring the centaur were, but he has the look of a man from Ofier. It was the first person of any kind she’d seen in a book with skin even close to as dark as hers. Maybe she should find it offensive that a creature—not a true human being—should be complected this way. But there is undoubtedly an affection contained within the piece: the subtle curve of the spine, the graceful bend of the raised foreleg, the devastating smile… She can’t help but think the painter’s intent was adoration rather than a slight.

Withdrawing from thoughts of her past, she half expects Geralt to be looking up at her, fidgeting impatiently, or simply moving on without her.

Instead, she finds he’s as entranced as she was, eyes fixed on the page.

She thinks for a moment of saying something, and realizes she has no idea what she’d even want to express.

It’s clear he’s going to have an extraordinarily interesting life.

If the masters at Kaer Morhen don’t kill him first, that is.

They move through the fable of the centaur as instructor, and she holds her breath as they approach the next section.

Perched on a rock formation typical of Skellige’s tempestuous coastline is a siren.

Unlike the naiad that preceded her, no attempt is made to clothe her with artfully placed rocks or her own limbs: her chest is fully bared. But the look in her eyes is as far from enticement as one could imagine. She’s fierce, angry—as though she’s being threatened. One gets the sense that, in one more second, she might drop her human guise altogether.

Geralt gasps, and she can hear so much in that one small intake of air: fear, respect, and a newly discovered longing.

He moves to touch the image, but stops himself before he brushes the page. His finger hovers over her cheek, then moves downward to trace the line of her wings, half extended in a fight-or-flight response.

“She looks so… strong,” he remarks.

She should remind him that this thing, for whatever it looks like, isn’t a human at all. It’s dangerous—murderous, even.

Nenneke sighs.

“She does, doesn’t she?” she agrees.

The boy’s whole posture has changed, instilled with an attentiveness that nears awe. Whatever she did or didn’t intend to inspire with her plan of action, she’s fairly certain he’d be fine here on his own. But there’s one more thing she wants to show him, and given the focus of the piece, she thinks this one is fairly safe.

When he retracts his hand from the page, she flips through several more until she finds what she’s looking for. The loveliest image in the entire book.

Taking up the spread of both pages, somehow both languorous and powerful at once, sits an enormous golden dragon.

In any other image, he’d appear in the same beige as the paper he was printed on, or perhaps in a cheery daffodil yellow.

But this being an illuminated manuscript, he is truly and completely _golden_. Every scale, every claw tip is gilded, shining up at them in painstakingly applied gold leaf. The effect, typically reserved for small details, is nearly overwhelming here, decadent but stunning.

Geralt is exactly as impressed as she supposed he might be—as impressed as she was at her first viewing of it.

“ _Gods_ ,” he whispers. “I mean…” He swallows. “Sorry, Sister.”

“No, no,” she pardons his exclamation quickly, sympathetically. “I always liked him, too. Unfortunately—or perhaps, fortunately, depending on how you look at it—dragons are rare now. And I’m fairly sure golden dragons were never real to begin with.”

The young witcher is silent for several moments, just staring.

“He’s very beautiful,” he says at last. “Even if he doesn’t exist.”

“Geralt—” she starts, just as he swivels in the chair, turning to look at her, saying “Sister—”

He nods his head in deference, letting her speak first.

“I was thinking,” she begins, hoping she sounds nonchalant, “I’d like to head back to bed, and…” She clears her throat softly. “I know you know this book is one of a kind. So please, if you’d just—”

“Yes,” he agrees quickly, and she’s pleased she doesn’t have to elaborate. “I’ll be careful. No Signs,” he promises. She can’t say for certain, but she thinks she catches a hint of pink gracing his cheek, highlighting his freckles. “No… no anything. I swear.”

“Good. Would you like to stay for a bit longer?”

No ambivalent shrugs this time; he nods at her definitely, immediately.

She hopes she’s not making a mistake. For the library’s sake, and for his sake, too.

“All right. You can leave the books in a stack on the table and I’ll replace them in the morning. Just remember to put out the candles, of course, before you go to sleep. You know how to get back to your room?”

He nods again, fingers dancing along the leather edge of the book’s cover.

She’s nearly made it to the doorway when he calls to her again.

“Sister Nenneke.”

Turning back, she can see, even in the surrounding dimness, that something is troubling him.

“Locard—one of the other boys—said…” He looks at the floor a moment, then back at her. “That I had to go through the Trials again because the first time didn’t take. That’s not true, is it?”

“ _No_ ,” she answers immediately, and she has to quash the impulse to call him something comforting, ‘sweet one,’ perhaps—the last thing the boy needs is coddling, especially at a moment like this. But perhaps there’s a residual trace of the sentiment when she says his name again. “No, Geralt. It isn’t.”

“Good,” he says, sounding resolute. “I mean. I didn’t think it was. But.” He bobs his head one more time, as if fixing the affirmation in his thoughts.

“Goodnight,” she says quietly.

“Goodnight, Sister. And... thank you.”

She turns back down the hallway before he can see her smile. “Of course.”

* * *

“Well?”

Aurus doesn’t shift from his kneeling meditative position on the bed, but cracks one golden eye open as she shuts the door behind her, as if coming back from his trance-like state slowly.

“He’s fine,” she says casually, beginning to strip down again. “I left him in the library.”

“The library?”

“We found some subject matter he was interested in.” She lets the robe fall from her shoulders, then: a distraction. She has no real desire to discuss Geralt’s… proclivities. Especially when it’s likely that some of them are no more than a passing phase, fancies he’ll grow out of after a couple of years on the Path.

Aurus eyes her hungrily, and they both smile.

“He’ll read for another hour, at most, and pass out with his head on a fleder or some such,” she explains breezily.

“Huh,” he marvels, then shakes his head. “See? Handled it better than I would’ve. Perfect Elder Sister.”

She meets him, kneeling on the bed, and he slips a hand into her hair, drawing her in for a long, deep kiss.

There’s something she can’t quite let go, though.

“Aurus.” She places a hand on his chest. “Are they going to give him any more mutagens?”

He frowns. “I don’t know. But I’m not sure I can do anything if they decide to. Prothero has final say—”

She looks up at him, eyes wide.

“You can veto him, though, can’t you? If you get a majority?”

He squints at her, not oblivious to her slyness. “Maybe.”

“Vesemir,” she says, thinking of the old sword master Geralt mentioned. “He would agree with you. And then you’d only need to bring two more masters around to your way of thinking.”

He chuckles. _“My_ way of thinking?” he asks pointedly.

 _“Aurus_ ,” she entreats him, taking his hand in both of her own. “Please. He’s smart and bored. He doesn’t need more abilities. He needs _friends_. He’s survived so much already.”

He sighs and kisses her nose. “I’ll... let him train with Daeden and Mauritt tomorrow. Maybe Eskel, too. If he gets close to any of them, I can probably make a case that they should stay together. To… better further their development,” he tries, testing out the argument, seeing how it sounds.

She lets her forehead find the soft warmth of his neck. “Thank you.”

“You’re such a schemer,” he teases. “Forget Elder. They’re going to elect you Mother soon if you’re not careful.”

“Ughhh, _no_ ,” she groans, laughing, pushing away the image of herself as some wrinkled sexless matron. “Not yet, please. Not for a good long while.”

She’s not terribly good at stillness, she knows that about herself. But it’s easier in his arms.

Once, she thinks, Aurus was a scared little boy like Geralt.

“Was it hard for you?” she asks. “When you—?”

He inhales sharply, body going stiff; his voice is iron when he replies.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

She separates from him, allowing him some space. She hadn’t fully considered that his hesitancy to intercede on the boy’s behalf came from a place of anguish. She has been through hardships of her own, but she can’t know what it’s like to have your insides remade, to be given wounds that never heal in the name of inhuman strength.

“I’m sorry—” she starts.

But he pulls her back in, wrapping her up tightly in his arms, engulfing her in warmth once more.

“It’s okay,” he reassures her. “I’m here now. Got my patron goddess of healing,” She can practically feel his smile as he squeezes her tightly. “All witchers should be so lucky.”

Just as she’s about to break the mood by reminding him that that’s an awful lot of sentiment for a witcher to show, his hands dart to her sides, fingers curling mischievously, and he begins to tickle her without mercy.

She _squeals_ hysterically, and falls back with him onto the bed, kicking the whole way down, fairly sure she’s making more racket that Geralt was before. Everyone’s sure to have heard her.

Maybe they won’t promote her to Elder this season after all.

Maybe she doesn’t care.

**Author's Note:**

> I've always headcanoned Nenneke in the books as black—specifically, as an older [Octavia Spencer](https://www.instagram.com/octaviaspencer/). So I've written her here with that in mind, except she's twenty one, obvs.
> 
> Likewise, [Lewis Tan](https://www.instagram.com/lewistanofficial/) is my faceclaim for Aurus. Because HNNNGGGGH.
> 
> Please consider leaving a kudo or a comment if you liked the story!


End file.
